The Weekend Wonk: David Hughes on the Shale Boom

November 3, 2013

I spoke saturday at the Conference on Michigan’s Future in beautiful northwest Michigan.

One of the most compelling presentations of the day came from David Hughes, a 32 year veteran of the Canadian Geological Survey, who has doggedly pursued the myth of the “100 year supply of cheap natural gas” promised by the natural gas fracking industry.

The U.S. is a mature exploration and development province for oil and gas. New technologies of large scale, multistage, hydraulic fracturing of horizontal wells have allowed previously inaccessible shale gas and tight oil to reverse the long-standing decline of U.S. oil and gas production. This production growth is important and has provided some breathing room. Nevertheless, the projections by pundits and some government agencies that these technologies can provide endless growth heralding a new era of “energy independence,” in which the U.S. will become a substantial net exporter of energy, are entirely unwarranted based on the fundamentals. At the end of the day, fossil fuels are finite and these exuberant forecasts will prove to be extremely difficult or impossible to achieve.

Alynskyite tactics? Would you prefer fascist tactics? Um, pushing facts? You mean like rejecting National Academy of Science findings on breeder proliferation in favor of your own bizarre view of the world? Your constructing a brand new straw man while ignoring your previous proven blatant errors, to wit, the lethality of water in Fukushima storage tanks? What never penetrates your skull is that you might, just might, be wrong or that anyone else might know something you dont. Just who is paying attention to facts more here, where the BN-800 reactor claimed to be cooled with lead? Which facts are you pushing forward? Just the ones that suit your agenda or a balance? Which facts do you ignore? Radiation at Fukushima, oh thats nothing. What disaster? You are not pushing a balance of sources. You have an axe to grind. Now you pretend you are balanced and you are just pushing facts for consideration. Bullshit. You are selling something alright. Who you jivin with that cosmic debris?

Um, No. You put your knowledge above the NAS and the entire US government and way more sources than that on the subject of breeders and proliferation. Then you bring up a brand new straw man. Thats what everybody is wrong except you means. But you are not just “pushing facts forward for consideration”. You have an axe to grind. Pretending you are innocent is BS. Who you jivin with that cosmik debris?

[…] policy and the future energy security of the country on it—is risky business,” says geologist David Hughes, who retired from the Canadian Geological Survey and is now doing assessments of shale gas and oil […]